Two seemingly opposing philosophies, Plato’s and Heidegger’s, are brought together by reading the philosophy of politics in the Republic through the existential-analytic lenses of Being and Time and also by using the former in order to explore the philosophico-political potential of the latter. Plato’s thematic of errancy (αμαρτία) is shown to interlock harmoniously with Ηeidegger’s thematic of the fall (Verfall). This provides a single, penetrating interpretation of how philosophy thinks humans are supposed to respond to the predicament of their (...) original condition (painfulness connected with injustice, meaninglessness, etc.). It turns out that in these otherwise antipodean versions of philosophizing, the view emerges, according to which the original difficulty can be fully overcome. The question whether the aforementioned predicament can be actually fully overcome (or rather not) however, would form the basis for a novel phenomenology of the political. (shrink)

The Martin Heidegger’s conference “On the essence of truth” was repeatedly pronounced between 1930 and 1932, published in 1943 and continued to be adjusted by the author until the sixties. In many ways, it seems to have a special role as a kind of “hinge” between Heidegger’s Being and Time and after the “turn” [Kehre] of his thinking, process that began precisely from thirties. With such intermediary role, the conference begins with conceptions still addressed from the perspective of Being and (...) Time, as the question of truth; but inserts fundamental themes, relating to the later work of the German thinker, as the notion of the veiling of being, the concept of errance and the perspective, only started at this conference, from a transformation of the very concept of essence [Wesen]. (shrink)

A discussion of how diggers stance with regard to contemporary analytic and Continental philosophy, with special emphasis on Heidegger's later works. The essay argues that Heidegger has now become attacks that people can interpret in many ways, and so is entered into dialogues which go against his own self-image of what he was about.